1366 x58 Xeon Enthusiast overclocks club

[Mazzspeed]

Sadly that was the case for me about a month ago, the X5670 running on Gigabyte X58-Extreme at 4.2Ghz + 24GB of RAM was still plenty fast for my needs but the platform was holding it back, specifically in the following ways (mostly related to PCIe):

1. Lack of PCI-e 3.0 and NVME support, I've researched lots of thread on how to get NVME working but suddenly noticed our lanes are only PCI-e 2.0 and suddenly realized wow is this really that old?
2. Lack of SATA 6gbps, because of this, I had been running a SAS2.0 RAID card to power my SSDs, this took up yet another precious PCI-e slot
3. Lack of USB3.0, was able to take advantage of that PCI-e 1x slot with an adapter but yea

It was sad removing and letting the old kit go, I've literally had that motherboard since 2011 and Gigabyte support has been superb.

I am glad to say my new kit is still staying in the lineage - Asus X99 + Xeon E5-2678 v3 + 64GB ECC RAM, while can't truly overclock this I am running the turbo lock mod. Good times

Well I can't saturate the PCI-e 2.0 bus no matter what I do and I have an LSI PCI-e 8x raid card flashed to IT mode for SATA3 as well as a NVME to PCI-e 8x adapter. Perhaps it's my ageing NVME SSD, but performance is still far better than any SATA3 SSD and I never want for any more power.

Yeah, USB 3.0 would be nice. But TBH, it's not something I in any way lust over - I'm not going to upgrade just for USB 3.0. I'm certainly not counting my use of PCI-e slots. The X99 platform is nice, but it's still demanding a high price as a result.

 

[freeagentt]

I used mine for 10 or 11 years. We had a good run. I cant bring myself to sell her. I've listed her a few times, and had buyers right away, but I caved with an apology. She is sitting in a box right now. I don't want to power her up because of her incessant need for electricity. The next time she gets power it will be for nostalgia, benchmarking, or because this one died.

 

[ChineseStunna]

Well I can't saturate the PCI-e 2.0 bus no matter what I do and I have an LSI PCI-e 8x raid card flashed to IT mode for SATA3 as well as a NVME to PCI-e 8x adapter. Perhaps it's my ageing NVME SSD, but performance is still far better than any SATA3 SSD and I never want for any more power.

Yeah, USB 3.0 would be nice. But TBH, it's not something I in any way lust over - I'm not going to upgrade just for USB 3.0. I'm certainly not counting my use of PCI-e slots. The X99 platform is nice, but it's still demanding a high price as a result.

My SAS2 raid card was perfectly fine in X58 as it was a PCI-e 2.0 based solution, however the speed (esp. sequential) on nvme had a large gap going from PCI-e 2 to 3. Almost like when SSDs first hit the scene with sata2 and maxed it out, then immediately saturated sata3 when it came out.

I also agree that used X99 (or X79 or many other high end platforms) is overpriced. $200ish is what I still see most days. I actually thought about making this move back in 2018 but DDR4 prices were also insane back then.
I was able to find a great price locally for both and really that's one of the main reasons I upgraded

 

[Makaveli@BETA]

I'll honestly cry when I'll have to RIP my x58
We've been through so much together..View attachment 287483

I already had that funeral in Dec 2019.

 

[FlawleZ]

L

Sadly that was the case for me about a month ago, the X5670 running on Gigabyte X58-Extreme at 4.2Ghz + 24GB of RAM was still plenty fast for my needs but the platform was holding it back, specifically in the following ways (mostly related to PCIe):

1. Lack of PCI-e 3.0 and NVME support, I've researched lots of thread on how to get NVME working but suddenly noticed our lanes are only PCI-e 2.0 and suddenly realized wow is this really that old?
2. Lack of SATA 6gbps, because of this, I had been running a SAS2.0 RAID card to power my SSDs, this took up yet another precious PCI-e slot
3. Lack of USB3.0, was able to take advantage of that PCI-e 1x slot with an adapter but yea

It was sad removing and letting the old kit go, I've literally had that motherboard since 2011 and Gigabyte support has been superb.

I am glad to say my new kit is still staying in the lineage - Asus X99 + Xeon E5-2678 v3 + 64GB ECC RAM, while can't truly overclock this I am running the turbo lock mod. Good times

There was a number of X58 boards that were equipped with SATA 3 and USB 3.0. Granted I think most had the marvel controller which sucked. I ran an X58 Sabertooth for a while and I loved that board. So sad it randomly stopped posting. X58 is still plenty capable for many things today . Just look at how many people are still using an AMD FX platform.

 

[jojo69]

still rocking the PIIIS Tualatin here as a linux audio server...I very much doubt the X58 setups are going anywhere any time soon

 

[ChineseStunna]

L
There was a number of X58 boards that were equipped with SATA 3 and USB 3.0. Granted I think most had the marvel controller which sucked. I ran an X58 Sabertooth for a while and I loved that board. So sad it randomly stopped posting. X58 is still plenty capable for many things today . Just look at how many people are still using an AMD FX platform.

Yep, there was a "refresh gen" of X58 that added USB3 and some had SATA6. Don't get me wrong, for me honestly it was an economics decision, keep putting $ into X58 to get where I want to use the same $ to upgrade platform to something more flexible. I was able to pick up an X99 board for a very reasonable (for me) price so decided to move on.

ChineseStunna mate, what voltage did you have for that 4.2? Taco has 1.35vcore

Another funny(not funny) phenomenon, if I ever push close to 1.5vcore, pc would turn off when I run cinebench. I can hear fans nd pump rpm sag a little and pooff.....OFF everything. My PSU is 750 watts and mobo is asus p6t del v1. Nt sure if vrm's poop or PSU running out of oomph. *ultra shrug*

This does nt occur when using only 1 or 2 cores(other cores disabled in bios). Taco even cn push 1.6voots nd nothing bad.

If I recall correctly about same as you, it was very easy and I didn't spend a ton of time to milk every little bit out of the platform. I went from an i7 950 at 4.2ghz (21x200) to X5670 running the same 21x200FSB settings. I saw some folks got to 4.4ghz but my board had a strange quirk where if I set multi to max of CPU, it would try to Turbo it +1, so I literally had 21x or 23x and not 22x. Pairing with DDR3-1600 the 200 FSB was a happy place.
I think it might be a VRM issue as 750 should be plenty, I have a 750w PSU as well and was even running dual 7970 crossfired just fine.

 

[ChineseStunna]

One additional thought I'd like to add is that over the years our priorities/goals change. When I was younger it was literally max performance at cost of everything else: power/heat, noise, stability, PITA (pain in the ass) - built a custom watercooler and loop from Home Depot parts before pre-fabbed kits/parts were available, it was fun. Overclocking is fun and remain my passion, but the amount of heat these chips put out full tilt makes my office a furnace and all the fan noise around it. Nowadays I still have fun tweaking/tuning but not going to spend days doing it as this is my production machine and work needs to get done, has to be rock solid stable and reasonably low heat/noise output.

I think current platform X99 + E5-2678 v3 is actually slower than X58 + X5670 @ 4.2ghz in single threads, as the 2678 will only do 3.3ghz max. I debated getting a Xeon 1660 v3 to overclock and get the same performance as X5670 but again, economics - that chip is 6 core @ about $170 on eBay vs. 2678 is 12 cores @ $80. Multithreaded performance with turbo unlock is about DOUBLE (cinebench R15, even more with AVX loads) vs. X5670 all while using a lot less power.

 

[Mazzspeed]

My SAS2 raid card was perfectly fine in X58 as it was a PCI-e 2.0 based solution, however the speed (esp. sequential) on nvme had a large gap going from PCI-e 2 to 3. Almost like when SSDs first hit the scene with sata2 and maxed it out, then immediately saturated sata3 when it came out.

My LSI raid card flashed to IT mode is only used for spinners, because I run Linux I have one 6TB HDD set up as /home and one 6TB HDD set up as a storage drive for general crap. Using mechanical spinners there's no way I can saturate that bus.

My NVME to PCI-e 8x SSD is used for the root file system, even that doesn't saturate the bus and benchmarks far faster than any SATA3 SSD. My system's quiet (compared to my overclocked machines of the past it's dead silent!) and with a 75w TDP my 2 x X5675's actually aren't that bad regarding power and heat output, in fact I never turn my PC off as I can apply 90% of updates without needing a reboot.

Your comments regarding X99 in single threaded application is interesting, the slower clock speeds in favor of core count it's one of the reasons I've held off upgrading.

 

[ChineseStunna]

My LSI raid card flashed to IT mode is only used for spinners, because I run Linux I have one 6TB HDD set up as /home and one 6TB HDD set up as a storage drive for general crap. Using mechanical spinners there's no way I can saturate that bus.

My NVME to PCI-e 8x SSD is used for the root file system, even that doesn't saturate the bus and benchmarks far faster than any SATA3 SSD. My system's quiet (compared to my overclocked machines of the past it's dead silent!) and with a 75w TDP my 2 x X5675's actually aren't that bad regarding power and heat output, in fact I never turn my PC off as I can apply 90% of updates without needing a reboot.

Your comments regarding X99 in single threaded application is interesting, the slower clock speeds in favor of core count it's one of the reasons I've held off upgrading.

Interesting you have a PCI-e 8x nvme card, I'm guessing it's an enterprise unit? Curious which model you went with?
Again I'm not super thrilled with the X99 solution but it's the best option given my requirements (budget/multithread/power/noise)

 

[Mazzspeed]

Interesting you have a PCI-e 8x nvme card, I'm guessing it's an enterprise unit? Curious which model you went with?
Again I'm not super thrilled with the X99 solution but it's the best option given my requirements (budget/multithread/power/noise)

Actually....Sorry, it's an m.2 to PCI-e adapter and it's x4 - But my LSI raid card is definitely x8. Performance still smashes any SATA3 SSD out there and the PCI-e 2.0 bus doesn't really seem to be a bottleneck.

 

[ChineseStunna]

Actually....Sorry, it's an m.2 to PCI-e adapter and it's x4 - But my LSI raid card is definitely x8. Performance still smashes any SATA3 SSD out there and the PCI-e 2.0 bus doesn't really seem to be a bottleneck.

Ah that makes sense then, I was looking into similar solutions as well. Glad you got it working especially as the boot device (read all about Clover/efi emulation).
My LSI raid card was fine too driving a 4x SSD R0 array and 2x SSD r0 array, the upgrade to X99 with native SATA3 ports allowed me to run those off the mobo directly and seems to actually gained a bit of performance according to benchmarks (nothing noticeable). The LSI RAID card is now driving 8X SAS 10k drives for a R5 storage array

 

[Mazzspeed]

Ah that makes sense then, I was looking into similar solutions as well. Glad you got it working especially as the boot device (read all about Clover/efi emulation).
My LSI raid card was fine too driving a 4x SSD R0 array and 2x SSD r0 array, the upgrade to X99 with native SATA3 ports allowed me to run those off the mobo directly and seems to actually gained a bit of performance according to benchmarks (nothing noticeable). The LSI RAID card is now driving 8X SAS 10k drives for a R5 storage array

Sorry about that, I fitted the card years ago and confused the interface with my LSI raid card. Yes, the device is bootable - It's actually a very effective solution and wasn't that expensive at the time.

 

[Makaveli@BETA]

I am sorry

No need to be sorry that system still works just retired from service.

 

[Deimos]

I've still got one 1366 system in active use. My work uses my hand-me-down as a file and domain server.

 

[RickyJ]

your just unstable or something.....i had ZERO freezes and crashes back with my x58 rig for very long durations at a time. With that being said the new x5800 (5x series) look to have some real power and efficiency thats calling my name

Yup, and this has been stable for years too. My 920 overclock degraded from 4.2 to 3.8 before I went x5670, and this has been going at 4.0 for years (I could only get 4.2 anyway). At some point hardware just goes. PSU is a 10-11yr old Corsair HX1000, mobo is 10, etc.

 

[RickyJ]

Well after probably 2-3 years of infrequent freezing at Win10 login screen, and only occasionally giving me a blue screen during those freezes, it's finally made a couple minidump files. Code 0x9C, it could have told me earlier but nooooo. "0x9C = QPI/VTT most likely, but increasing vcore has helped in some instances"

My QPI was already at the advised max of 1.35V, so I upped my Vcore from 1.35 to 1.375V. Fingers crossed!

 

[x58]

I'm thinking of getting either a W3680 or X5675 to upgrade my trusty old i7 920 which sits in a Gigabyte X58 Extreme motherboard. The W3680 has an unlocked multiplier but also has a higher TDP when compared to the X5675. I can get both for the same price and would like to overclock the CPU, wondering if anyone can shed advice on which one to get?

 

[ChineseStunna]

I'm thinking of getting either a W3680 or X5675 to upgrade my trusty old i7 920 which sits in a Gigabyte X58 Extreme motherboard. The W3680 has an unlocked multiplier but also has a higher TDP when compared to the X5675. I can get both for the same price and would like to overclock the CPU, wondering if anyone can shed advice on which one to get?

I had the same board and both are great upgrades. With that said stock TDP goes out the window as soon as you start overclocking. I would go for whichever suits your OC goals and have fun . I ran a 5670 in mine and it was rock solid at 4.2ghz

 

[Dan_D]

This still a thing? I should get out my X58 stuff and sell it.

 

[x58]

I had the same board and both are great upgrades. With that said stock TDP goes out the window as soon as you start overclocking. I would go for whichever suits your OC goals and have fun . I ran a 5670 in mine and it was rock solid at 4.2ghz

Thinking to go with the X5675 as it runs cooler. I haven't changed the thermal paste on the CPU since I set this up around 10 years ago! Any recommendations on what to use? Will be using the Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 cooler which should hopefully be able to keep the temp down.

 

[Logan M]

Thinking to go with the X5675 as it runs cooler. I haven't changed the thermal paste on the CPU since I set this up around 10 years ago! Any recommendations on what to use? Will be using the Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 cooler which should hopefully be able to keep the temp down.

Grizzly Kryonaut is the favorite choice these days for standard applications. Though you won't go wrong with any of the top rated pastes.

 

[jojo69]

This still a thing? I should get out my X58 stuff and sell it.

didn't you have an R3 black Dan?

 

[Mazzspeed]

Thinking to go with the X5675 as it runs cooler. I haven't changed the thermal paste on the CPU since I set this up around 10 years ago! Any recommendations on what to use? Will be using the Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 cooler which should hopefully be able to keep the temp down.

I did a quick and dirty test on my dual X5675's while my system was Processing Vulkan shaders for Metro Exodus as a result of an Nvidia driver update. Processing shaders makes 100% use of all 12C/24T, so I flipped my UPS to display wattage in order to gauge power draw at full load.

~450 watts and ~65 degrees heat output, air cooled in a fairly compact Dell T5500 workstation. I was actually quite impressed, IMO that's not too bad at all.

 

[bjtag]

x58 Has been the BigBlock CPU of Computers... Big Heavy - Fast Strong - Lasts for Years...
I know mine been a Beast since Day 1...
Will be very sad when she goes...

 

[ChineseStunna]

x58 Has been the BigBlock CPU of Computers... Big Heavy - Fast Strong - Lasts for Years...
I know mine been a Beast since Day 1...
Will be very sad when she goes...

Very poetic and true, 45mm Bloomfields were good, then Westmere just took it to another level. I'm sure years down the road this will be my "retro build", along with an original socket A Duron that can overclock 100%

 

[Mazzspeed]

One thing to consider about my above power draw result is that figure includes my 4k monitor, turn the monitor off and power draw drops by ~40 watts...

 

[bal3wolf]

x58 Has been the BigBlock CPU of Computers... Big Heavy - Fast Strong - Lasts for Years...
I know mine been a Beast since Day 1...
Will be very sad when she goes...

for sure i still have a x58 in service to run game servers off of and some meta trader to make me some money works pretty good my x58 def has had more life then the x99 i had i feel like my x99 was a money pit for time i got out of it compared to the x58. And my asus board is built like a tank i had 2 PSU's go bad and burn the atx and eps part of board i cleaned it up shaved off the burnt plastic and it was back in service.

 

[bjtag]

for sure i still have a x58 in service to run game servers off of and some meta trader to make me some money works pretty good my x58 def has had more life then the x99 i had i feel like my x99 was a money pit for time i got out of it compared to the x58. And my asus board is built like a tank i had 2 PSU's go bad and burn the atx and eps part of board i cleaned it up shaved off the burnt plastic and it was back in service.

Had EVGA 850w nearly burn to the ground on my x58 rig 3 years ago when I was mining with 3x 1080ti 's... Plugged new one in still kicking to this day...

 

[bal3wolf]

Had EVGA 850w nearly burn to the ground on my x58 rig 3 years ago when I was mining with 3x 1080ti 's... Plugged new one in still kicking to this day...

yep i was mining on a 5970 and 5870 when i had my first psu smoke on the x58.

 

[kirbyrj]

L
There was a number of X58 boards that were equipped with SATA 3 and USB 3.0. Granted I think most had the marvel controller which sucked. I ran an X58 Sabertooth for a while and I loved that board. So sad it randomly stopped posting. X58 is still plenty capable for many things today . Just look at how many people are still using an AMD FX platform.

Yeah, I had that same Sabertooth X58 board. The Marvel controller even with "SATA3" was slower than the Intel SATA2. It wasn't worth using. USB 3.0 is easy. PCIe x1 add-on cards are cheap. I got a couple with front panel connectors and didn't have any issues.

 

[ChineseStunna]

OK so I just couldn't stay away from X58, picked up a Asus P6X58d-e that has the built-in SATA3 (I know crappy Marvel) and USB3. Now to get a Xeon and some RAM for it to see if this Asus can outgun my Gigabyte on overclocking.
One fun/nice tidbit - Asus bios comes with VT-d (PCI-e passthrough) for virtualization available in the stock BIOS which is nice if you're running ESXi (what I used my Gigabyte for the first few years), the Gigabyte boards did not have this option, however, to their credit, the support team was supercool and an engineer gave me a "custom" BIOS that enabled this hidden feature for the board.

 

[ChineseStunna]

I hope you guys are happy haha, the other piece of kit I could never let go is my Silverstone Fortress FT02 case, never thought I'd be so attached to these 2 things

 

[Mazzspeed]

OK so I just couldn't stay away from X58, picked up a Asus P6X58d-e that has the built-in SATA3 (I know crappy Marvel) and USB3. Now to get a Xeon and some RAM for it to see if this Asus can outgun my Gigabyte on overclocking.
One fun/nice tidbit - Asus bios comes with VT-d (PCI-e passthrough) for virtualization available in the stock BIOS which is nice if you're running ESXi (what I used my Gigabyte for the first few years), the Gigabyte boards did not have this option, however, to their credit, the support team was supercool and an engineer gave me a "custom" BIOS that enabled this hidden feature for the board.

Gigabyte have always been really good in this regard. My Gigabyte GA60XET S370 Tualatin motherboard didn't have a 1/4 pci/agp divider on release, I sent an email to Gigabyte highlighting the issue and they released an upgraded BIOS with not only a 1/4 divider, but also a 1/5th and 1/6th pci/agp divider. As far as I'm aware, it was the only S370 motherboard that could run a 166MHZ FSB with pci/agp perfectly in spec.

I've still got that motherboard and the Pentium 3S 1.26Ghz processor, it still runs great under Windows 2000 to this day.

 

[freeagentt]

My first X58 was was a Giga UD7. It was a really nice board. Beautiful even. But it was so sloppy with its voltages. Terrible. I sold that board and moved into a Rampage III Formula. It was a literal night and day difference. I probably wont run another Gigabyte board lol.

 

[ChineseStunna]

My first X58 was was a Giga UD7. It was a really nice board. Beautiful even. But it was so sloppy with its voltages. Terrible. I sold that board and moved into a Rampage III Formula. It was a literal night and day difference. I probably wont run another Gigabyte board lol.

Every brand has their hit or misses for sure, personally my preference is Asus/Gigabyte then eVGA. MSI on the other hand won't touch if I could help it. I think they've improved over the past few years but working in a computer shop back in the 90s-2000s just put a bad taste in my mouth with them, not to mention earlier days can't overclock to save their life.

 

[freeagentt]

Every brand has their hit or misses for sure, personally my preference is Asus/Gigabyte then eVGA. MSI on the other hand won't touch if I could help it. I think they've improved over the past few years but working in a computer shop back in the 90s-2000s just put a bad taste in my mouth with them, not to mention earlier days can't overclock to save their life.

I hear Asus isn't like they were before, msi is still carp, and giga is godly. I couldn't say because all of my stuff is old. I thought Assrock was junk until I got one, have to say its pretty decent.. I was an Asus guy, still am I suppose, but my last Asus died, extremely rare event for me. I only had 1 other Asus die but that was in the 939 days and I think my PSU took it out. Might have pushed my NEO 480 a bit too hard I take back what I say about Giga, I'm sure they pulled their balls together by now.

 

[ChineseStunna]

I hear Asus isn't like they were before, msi is still carp, and giga is godly. I couldn't say because all of my stuff is old. I thought Assrock was junk until I got one, have to say its pretty decent.. I was an Asus guy, still am I suppose, but my last Asus died, extremely rare event for me. I only had 1 other Asus die but that was in the 939 days and I think my PSU took it out. Might have pushed my NEO 480 a bit too hard I take back what I say about Giga, I'm sure they pulled their balls together by now.

I've heard lots of good things about ASRock as well, esp. their server stuff is interesting and innovative in terms of design/features. Funny they were literally spun out of Asus to handle OEM orders (part of Pegatron) then Pegatron basically decided to go after its maker ASUS and created ASRock

 

[Mazzspeed]

In my early days of X58 I ran a Foxconn Flaming Blade. That board was awesome, pushed my i7 920 to 4.2Ghz no worries.

My Gigabyte GA60XET will push my Tualatin P3 1.4 to 1.7Ghz no problem in the world.

 

[rickmig]

Hi all!
New time poster - Old time user here! Hope you're all OK in these times

- I've been using X58 platform since 2010. Always used my i7-920 and now switched to XEON W3680 because 6 cores and price.
My system:
Motherboard: ASUS P6X58D - Premium
CPU: Xeon W3680 (133 X25)
RAM: GSkill Ripjaws 1600Mhz (9-9-9-24)
Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 (new)
GPU: GTX 1060 6Gb

- Just got a new Noctua cooler bacause @4GHz I was getting temps high @80'sºC and wasn't comfortable with... Now with the NH-D15 i'm in the mid 60's @4.2Ghz under full load! This is the speed i'm trying to test now.

- I've tried some tweaking and got about:
3.8 Ghz - 1.216v Vcore (X19)
4.0 Ghz - 1.296v Vcore (X20)
4.2 Ghz - 1.336v Vcore (X21)
BLCK = 200
QPI/RAM (VTT) = 1.25v or 1.225v
RAM - 1.60v
LLC = Enabled

- I'm trying to use voltage OFFSET to get to same voltages or thereabouts, and got the benefit of reduced voltage when not under load. Got SPEEDSTEP enabled and other C STATES.

• Right now I'm focusing using the OFFSET voltage because of the benefits of low voltage when just browsing or doing low load stuff.
• Now, i used OCCT, AIDA64 and IBT and some GTA5 runs to get stability tests. I use GTA because I got to understanding that many times I got a good test (pass) in OCCT and AIDA64 tests but then after 15 or 20 minutes playing GTA it crashed to desktop telling me there is some kind of instability. Then I bumped Vcore a notch and it got better. Also bumped a little ICH (1.82v) just in case...
• This is not unique to GTA, it happened also in some other low activity programs.
• Well this is strange to me because it isn't what I was used to.
• I can only think that is has something to do with the low voltage situations with the C STATES or something... Maybe you guys can help me here try to understand what can it be???
• Or maybe some kind of setting that can make it stable. I'm not an expert so..

Thanks
RicK